The Eye of Horus

The Eye of Horus is a symbol from ancient Egyptian religion, typically shown as the left wedjat-eye (the right being the Eye of Ra). It stands for well-being, healing, and protection. Its meaning comes from the myth where the god Horus fought his rival Set, who tore out or destroyed one or both of Horus’s eyes. Another deity, often Thoth, helped heal or return the eye. Horus then gave the restored eye to his dead father Osiris, and its life-giving power kept Osiris alive in the afterlife. Because of this, the Eye of Horus became linked to funerary offerings and all gifts given to gods in temple rituals. It could also symbolize the moon, with its phases compared to the eye’s injury and healing.

The symbol itself is a stylized eye with distinct markings, believed to hold protective magic. It appeared often in Egyptian art and was one of the most common amulet designs, used from the Old Kingdom through the Roman period. During the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom, pairs of Horus eyes were painted on coffins. The symbol also showed up on carved stone stelae and on the bows of boats. People in nearby regions, such as Syria, Canaan, and especially Nubia, adopted it to some extent. The eye was also written as a hieroglyph (𓂀). Egyptologists have long thought that hieroglyphs for parts of the symbol stood for fractions in ancient Egyptian math, though this idea has been questioned.

The god Horus was a sky deity, and many Egyptian texts say his right eye was the sun and his left eye the moon. These solar and lunar eyes were sometimes linked to Egypt’s red and white crowns. Some texts use the Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra interchangeably, though the Eye of Ra is often a separate power of the sun god Ra, sometimes personified as a goddess. Egyptologist Richard H. Wilkinson believed the two eyes gradually became distinct: the lunar Eye of Horus and the solar Eye of Ra. Other scholars argue that no clear text equates Horus’s eyes with the sun and moon until the New Kingdom; Rolf Krauss suggests the Eye of Horus originally represented Venus as the morning and evening star, only later becoming the moon. Katja Goebs thinks the myths of both eyes share a core element: a missing or distant object that is returned. In the Eye of Ra myth, a goddess flees Ra and is brought back. In the Eye of Horus myth, the eye is usually lost due to Horus’s conflict with Set over the kingship of Egypt after Osiris’s death.

The Pyramid Texts from the late Old Kingdom are among the earliest sources for Egyptian myth. They heavily feature the Horus-Set conflict, and the Eye of Horus appears in about a quarter of the utterances. Set is said to have stolen the eye, sometimes trampling and eating it, but Horus takes it back, often by force. The theft of the eye is mentioned alongside the loss of Set’s testicles, which is also healed. Later texts elaborate on this conflict. In most versions, another deity restores the eye, most often Thoth, who makes peace between Horus and Set. In some accounts, Thoth reassembles the eye after Set tears it apart. In the New Kingdom Book of the Dead, Set takes the form of a black boar to strike Horus’s eye. In “The Contendings of Horus and Set,” a late New Kingdom narrative, Set tears out both eyes and buries them; the next morning they grow into lotuses. Here, the goddess Hathor restores Horus’s eyes by anointing them with gazelle’s milk. In Papyrus Jumilhac from the early Ptolemaic Period, Horus’s mother Isis waters the buried eyes, and they grow into the first grapevines.

Restoring the eye was often called “filling” it. Hathor filled Horus’s eye sockets with gazelle’s milk, while Greco-Roman temple texts say Thoth and fourteen other deities filled the eye with specific plants and minerals. This filling process was compared to the moon waxing, and the fifteen deities represented the fifteen days from new moon to full moon. Egyptologist Herman te Velde links the Eye of Horus to another episode where Set sexually assaults Horus, and in retaliation, Isis and Horus cause Set to ingest Horus’s semen. In “The Contendings of Horus and Set,” Horus’s semen appears on Set’s forehead as a golden disk, which Thoth places on his own head. Other texts imply that in some versions, Thoth himself emerged from Set’s head after Set was impregnated by Horus’s semen.